[darcs-devel] [issue1457] Replace --no-foo with --foo=no

Trent Buck bugs at darcs.net
Tue May 5 03:30:25 UTC 2009


New submission from Trent Buck <trentbuck at gmail.com>:

For some time I have been annoyed by the inconsistency of --foo
vs. --dont-foo or --no-foo in our command-line options.  On the user
list it was felt that this inconsistency was justified because FSVO
foo, "dont[sic] foo" was better English than "no foo".

It occurs to me that this case could be handled better by allowing
options to take arguments:

    Proposed  Current equivalent
    ========  ==================
    --foo     --foo
    --foo=yes --foo
    --foo=no  --no-foo (or --dont-foo)

This would obviate issue1291 (compress option list) because

    --test                          run the test script
    --no-test                       don't run the test script

would become something like

    --test=[YES|no]                 run the test script

This would also obviate the ugly "option sets" that Darcs has
internally, by replacing them with *one* option that can take various
arguments.  The most obvious example for this would be

    --darcs-2
    --hashed
    --old-fashioned-inventory
    [...more, as we add formats]

becoming something like

    --format=[darcs-2|hashed|old-fashioned-inventory]

----------
messages: 7786
nosy: dmitry.kurochkin, kowey, simon, thorkilnaur, twb
status: unread
title: Replace --no-foo with --foo=no

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Darcs bug tracker <bugs at darcs.net>
<http://bugs.darcs.net/issue1457>
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